ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A local excavator driver has brought commerce and content consumption in Betoota Heights to a halt this afternoon after he and his boss decided to dig before they dialed.
On the corner of Greenbrayer Road and the A45 Bypass, a road crew dug up a fiber optic cable responsible for carrying much of the data between the district’s node and the main telecom hub in the Old City.
While many private clients can simply switch over to mobile data, businesses and landline customers have been plunged back into the dark ages of using cash and taking notes with a pen and paper.
The excavator driver who dug the cable up was allegedly asked by a civil engineer on-site if he had clearance to dig just moments before ground was broken.
The engineer spoke to The Advocate a short time ago where they detailed what happened after.
“He laughed when I asked if he knew where he was digging,” said the engineer.
“He said, ‘Dial before I dig? [laughs] What am I? A leftie? [laughs]’ then proceeded to plunge the bucket into the earth while the rest of his crew chuckled along. Four blokes, all leaning on shovels, laughing at me. One of them even made fun of me, asked if my boots came in men’s sizes because they looked ‘cute,’ which is something I didn’t appreciate,”
“Anyway, jokes on them. The third bucket they lifted up had a length of fiber optic cable in it. One of those mouth breathers grabbed hold of it and asked what this ‘LBGT’ cable was and then laughed to him. They looked at me but saw that my mouth was on the ground.”
The road crew initially laughed off the problem, telling themselves that it was ‘just a power cable’ and that any old sparky would be able to patch it back together in two seconds.
“The police turned up with the fire brigade about 30 minutes later, then my boss turned up. He was not in a good mood. Until I showed him that we’d at least tried to warn them. We hadn’t marked anything out. Then my boss laughed and said it wasn’t our problem,” the engineer continued.
“Best kind of problem to have on any construction site. One that’s not yours.”
More to come.
